Has The UK Had Exceptional Winter Rainfall Or Is It Just Weather As Normal?

The BBC Horizon programme on ‘Global Weirding’Horizon : “Something weird seems to be happening to our weather – it appears to be getting more extreme.”

The BBC reports:
Dame Julia Slingo, Met Office Chief Scientist, said the variable UK climate meant there was “no definitive answer” to what caused the storms. “But all the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change,” she added. “There is no evidence to counter the basic premise that a warmer world will lead to more intense daily and hourly rain events.”

“We have records going back to 1766 and we have nothing like this,” she said. “We have seen some exceptional weather. We can’t say it is unprecedented but it is exceptional.”

When we look at the graphs below we see that in 2014 we have one point outside the Upper Control Limit, but looking at the previous years we see that the system was very much in control, the rainfall figures bouncing around the average, so is the Met Office basing its comments on a single data point? The figures also suggest that the period 1909 to 1930 was one of the most consistently wettest periods.

Hello, Oldgifford,
I would really like to contact you regarding the quality approach to climate time series, and would welcome an email. I can’t post graphics on blogs (don’t know how!), but you would be interested I’m sure on how I approach these data.
Robin (in Bromsgrove)